Many people today have multiple and different types of devices that they use to access the Internet for a multitude of reasons, such as to shop for consumer goods, find a service provider, for entertainment, for social networking, and/or for many other business and personal reasons. For example, one person may connect and access the Internet at various times of the day from any number of different devices, such as a mobile phone, a tablet device, a desktop computer, a network-enabled television, from his or her car, and with other electronic media devices.
Providers of applications and on-line access to goods and services seek to track visitors who download applications and visit Web sites to better understand how users interact with their technology. The access and application providers particularly want to know such information as why a user visits a particular Web site, what the visitor does and how the visitor navigates through the site, where the visitor ends up, and why the visitor leaves and/or goes to a different site. A user that has multiple devices makes this type of tracking difficult because the user will appear as a different visitor on each device. For example, a user who clicks on an advertisement starting a Web site visit from one device, and then later makes a purchase from a second device, will appear first as an actively acquired visitor who failed to convert and second as a separate visitor of unknown acquisition who did convert when making the purchase. A visitor who appears and makes a purchase without seemingly having first viewed and selected an advertisement may simply be changing devices. An acquisition campaign associated with the purchased product or service will not be properly credited because the visitor first appeared as an actively acquired visitor who failed to convert.
In many cases, browser application cookies are used to identify a returning visitor to a Web site and/or pages of the site. However, cookies are not utilized across different devices, or even across browser applications on the same device, and cookies do not identify a user of multiple, different devices. Typically, a person that appears as two different visitors to a particular Web site is only recognized as the same individual if the person logs-in to the site from both of the devices used to access the Web site. Many times however, users do not log-in, or prefer not to provide the information needed to setup a login account.